The Yummy Casserole
by StoryMaker the Echidna
Summary: Clark realizes at an inopportune time that he doesn't own any oven mitts.


"Thanks for inviting me over, Clark," Jimmy said. "But to be honest, um…I'm kind of bored of playing Yahtzee…" He opened up his hand and the dice slowly tumbled out.

"Oh, well, um, that's OK," Clark said. He sighed inwardly. Yahtzee was his favorite game, and Jimmy was his favorite friend, but unfortunately, the two did not mix.

Clark concealed his disappointment. "Well, if you forfeit, that means I win again!" he said, grinning. "Good game!" He extended his hand.

"Uh…yeah…good game," Jimmy said, shaking it.

Clark glanced into the kitchen. His super vision enabled him to see that the timer for the casserole he was baking only had a few seconds left. He then looked through the oven door and saw that the casserole looked great!

"Hey, Jimmy, ready for some casserole?" Clark said with a smile. "I think it's almost done."

"Great!" Jimmy said, leaping to his feet. "I'll put Yahtzee away."

 _He'd like to put Yahtzee away for good,_ Clark thought, _but he can't because it's not alive in the first place. Phew!_

The timer went off just as soon as Clark entered the kitchen. The super-powered alien didn't bother to restrain his speed too much since Jimmy wasn't in the room, so the timer was turned off almost as soon as it had come on.

Moments later, Jimmy entered the kitchen. "It smells good!" Jimmy said. "And I'm sure it'll taste good, too."

"After all," Clark said, "it is a cheesy potato _corn flake_ casserole!"

"Mmmm…how can anything that contains _Kellogg's Corn Flakes_ be _anything_ but _fantastic?_ " Jimmy said.

"Exactly," Clark said with a smile. He opened the oven door. He was about to grab it, when he remembered…

"Oh! Wait, right. Have to get a hot pad," he said. "Heh." When he was cooking by himself, he sometimes didn't bother using a hot pad and would just set the food on his lap, so he hadn't really gotten the habit ingrained. He gently closed the oven door (though he handled practically everything in a gentle manner lest he crush it with his titanic strength, so perhaps that adverb was unessential) and opened the nearby cabinet to retrieve the desired object. He then set it on the table and went back to the oven.

Jimmy blinked. "Umm…don't you need something to cover your hands too?"

"Huh?" Clark glanced at Jimmy and blinked.

Jimmy blinked back.

"Oh…right…uh, oven mitts. Yeah," Clark said. "Heh."

 _Oh, no! Do I even OWN oven mitts?_ the mild-mannered reporter thought, panicked. He frantically searched his cabinet, barely able to restrain his speed – though it was hardly necessary anyway, considering his x-ray vision.

He was about to use his x-ray vision and super sight to look through all of his cabinets nigh-instantly, but he told himself that he really ought to at least make a token effort at pretending to search the normal way. So he did. His findings: he had no oven mitts.

"I…uh…I-I'm sorry, Jimmy." He gulped. "I can't seem to find them." His face flushed. Of course, the reason why he didn't own oven mitts was because he didn't need them...until now.

"Oh, um…that's alright," Jimmy said. "I mean, nothing to be embarrassed about. I lose things all the time."

"Uh…th-thanks," Clark said. "But…uh…now what am I going to do? I…I don't have any other hot pads other than that one."

"Uh…that's…a problem," Jimmy said. "Um…"

Of course, Clark knew that all he really had to do was get Jimmy to look away so he could pretend to have found the oven mitts while he was really taking the casserole out of the oven with his bare hands.

"Say, Jimmy, um…I'll keep looking for the oven mitts. I'm pretty sure I have some," Clark lied. "How about you just, um, watch TV or something?"

"No, I'll help you look," Jimmy said.

"Oh, um…OK. How about you…look in the TV room?" Clark said.

"Huh…? Um…OK…" Jimmy said. "If…you think they might be there." Jimmy walked off.

 _Yes!_ Clark thought. _Jimmy's turned away!_ "Good news, Jimmy! I found the oven mitts!" he said as he opened the oven door.

"Great!" Jimmy ran back into the kitchen…before Clark could take the casserole out of the oven. "Huh? You don't look like you're wearing oven mitts."

 _Drat! Bad timing, Clark,_ the reporter told himself. _Though it would be rather awkward if you took the casserole out of the oven and THEN told him to stop looking, I guess…_

Clark drew in his breath. "Ha, ha, um…I was just joking." He shut the oven.

Jimmy blinked. "Oh…kay…"

"Um…I guess you should…just…keep looking in the TV room!" Clark said.

"I have an idea, Clark!" Jimmy said. "I'll just use the internet to look for oven mitt substitutes."

 _Oh no! I still have my Superman email address pulled up on my laptop!_ Clark thought, panicked.

Jimmy used his smartphone.

 _Oh._ Clark felt both relieved and stupid.

"Hey, Clark, it says that a kitchen towel can work too, if you have tempered hands."

Clark smiled. "Cool! Thanks, Jimmy!"

"Um…do you have tempered hands?" Jimmy said.

"Aw, sure," Clark said. He grabbed the nearest towel and swiftly (though not super-swiftly) opened the oven and retrieved the casserole. But he decided that he better make this believable, since "tempered and robust" wasn't exactly the image of himself he wanted to project.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Clark said, quickly setting the casserole down.

"Yipes! Are you OK?" Jimmy said.

"Uh-h, sure," Clark said. He ran his hands under cold water, secretly grinning to himself.

"Mmm-mmm! I don't know about you, Jimmy, but I'm ready to dig in!" Clark said. He got out a big spoon and stuck it in the casserole.

"Uh...it just came out of the oven," Jimmy said.

"…Oh." Clark felt stupid. He was about to blow a breath on it that would cool it down instantly, but then he remembered that he wasn't supposed to be able to do that. He barely suppressed a sigh.

"I feel ya, Clark," Jimmy said. "It looks delicious."

"Oh well. Let's just go to back to the living room and…um…chat, I guess," Clark said.

They chittered and chattered until the casserole cooled off. Then they ate it. Well, not all of it – they weren't _that_ hungry.

 **The End.**


End file.
